The last edition of the German (snake-oil) HiFi-magazine AUDIO reported on some interesting recent research on hearing. They claim humanity is made up of two types of listeners: the fundamental tone hearer and the overtone hearer. They go on and say that the former is prevalently hearing with the left side of his brain and usually prefers melodic music and higher instruments (piano, violin, flute), while the latter is hearing with his ride side and favours instruments with rich timbre (voice, bassoon, cello).

There is a simple test, to find out to which class you belong. A pair of sounds is played and you decide whether the frequency is increasing or decreasing.

Here is the file: audio.de - overtone.flacThere is a total of 12 pairs. A German-speaking voice introduces each iteration and every pair is repeated once. For each sequence jot down, whether you thought the frequency to be increasing or decreasing.

Afterwards compare your results with this table:

CODE

incr decr1 x2 x3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x8 x9 x 10 x11 x12 x

The more your results agree with this list, the more you are a fundamental tone hearer. If your result is the exact inverse of the above, you are a pure overtone hearer.

Very interresting. I just tried the test on my girlfriend which I suspected had a different hearing than mine.

I'm a pure fundamental-hearer and I prefer melodic music. My girlfriend listens to a lot of alternative music, classical and often prefers vocal music - A broad range. The test results are mixed 50/50: